World of Spirits
by Era Yachi
Summary: Azula has a new toy that is guaranteed to capture the Avatar. Of course, it fails dismally. And someone else pays a heavy price.
1. Chapter 1

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World of Spirits

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**Summary:** Azula has a new toy that is guaranteed to capture the Avatar. Of course, it fails dismally. And someone else pays a heavy price.

**AN:** Sokka-based…but really, it's heavily based with all of the main characters…in one chapter or another. Um…that's all. Enjoy.

* * *

- 

In her hands lay the Spirit Idol.

Princess Azula didn't typically rely on such superstitious trinkets. Golden chalice this, holy emblem that—who actually used that kind of garbage? The whole world could go up in smoke and the sages of the Fire Temple would still be cowering under their towers of old, dusty scrolls, waiting for the Avatar to come and save their pathetic little existence from being wiped out.

Well, two-thousand-year-old traditions never stopped her from breaking a few necks so far. And who was to say that _all_ of the temple's artifacts were useless?

_T__his looks exactly like that object grandfather wouldn't stop rambling about, _she thought with deep, invigorating satisfaction. Behind her, the old geezer sage who had traded the Idol for his life was dragged away by her henchmen—well, soldiers, anyway. The touch of cool metal and tempered weight of the delicate model was unimpressive, but there was no mistaking its authenticity. She'd had to kill four _very_ unfortunate people just to get her hands on it.

Her plan was faultless. Every attempt she had ever made to capture the Avatar so far had ended with failure—

No, not failure.

Mere obstacles.

But this time, it was different. She'd been thinking too literally. Trying to outmaneuver that little Airbender weasel and his flying cow was too time-consuming. As long as he had his bending powers and his Avatar State, the chances of letting him slip away were too high from now on. If she was going to trap him for good, she had to make sure he couldn't escape…and that his water peasants stayed out of the picture.

So. How does one permanently disable another's bending abilities and keep him a prisoner?

With the Spirit Idol, of course.

Really, it was said to have been used by ancient Firelords to trap and subdue dangerous Fire Spirits and harness their power. But she knew the Idol was much more practical than that. Under the right circumstances, the Spirit Idol could trap a perfectly ordinary person's spirit in the Spirit World…and not only that, but chain it eternally to follow the Idol wherever it went.

If her father wanted the Avatar so badly, who said he needed the Avatar's body? If the Idol worked properly, maybe it was even possible to harness the Avatar's power through the Spirit World.

Naturally, she didn't care one way or the other. It would be _so_ incredibly satisfying to see the look on Zuko's face when he delivered Aang's spiritless body at the feet of the Firelord, only to learn that his more _productive_ baby sister had already accomplished what he couldn't.

Azula stepped out onto the temple's sun-baked terrace and inhaled the summer air. She eyed the metal figure in her palms. The sage had been generous enough to impart the Firebending technique she needed to use this wretched thing. But now that she had the tool, she needed an idea on how to use it…

What would make the Avatar most vulnerable?

The answer was so obvious; it was impossible to refrain from laughing. Could capturing him really be _this_ easy?

_Well_, she mused, tightening her grip around the artifact. _I guess there's only one way to find out. _

-

* * *

_ -_

Sokka lay stretched out on his back, thoroughly enjoying the relaxing, worry-free feeling of having absolutely _nothing_ to do.

That's right. Sweet, sunny daydreams. The air was crisp, the grass soft, the sun warm, the river pleasant-sounding…

Wait.

There wasn't a river nearby.

It struck him an instant later. 'It', of course, referring to the wave of cold water that suddenly hit him from above. He jumped to his feet, thoroughly drenched to his skin and yelling loudly over Toph's uncontrollable laughter.

"Katara, why'd you _do_ that?" he cried, waving his arms. He rounded on his sister and Aang, who happened to be standing on the other side of their campsite.

Katara folded her arms. "It wasn't me, Sokka; it was Aang. And even though I'm _sure_ it was an accident, you're _supposed_ to be awake and gathering supplies for tomorrow!"

Supplies? _Supplies_? "What—" he almost squeaked. Then he got a little angrier. "But I did that already! They're right over—"

He swung around to point at the pile of berry sacs and carefully packaged vegetables that he'd so meticulously organized the day before. What he saw made his jaw drop open and Aang's icy water bath instantly became the last thing he cared about.

Appa gazed back at him, casually munching on the remains of their food supplies. Momo froze midway through the act of popping a berry into his mouth. Chirping at the death-glare on Sokka's face, the lemur took a swift dive under the cover of Appa's front legs and didn't emerge.

Trembling, Sokka whirled around once more and just about exploded in protest. "How could you just stand there and not do anything?" he cried. "Come on! I spent almost six hours getting us enough food to last us _three_ days!"

Katara and Aang exchanged glances. The Avatar smiled sheepishly, but his sister was as stubborn as always. "Aang and I were too busy training, Sokka. You're the one who was napping on the job"

"Yeah, but—

"You know, you could have prevented this from happening if you'd remembered to feed Appa last night," Toph remarked detachedly, having appeared behind the flying bison. Now she stood while stroking Appa's forehead with a resolute stinginess that wasn't at all unexpected. "That, and you left all the food just lying on the ground. Admit it, meat-boy. You're slipping."

"_Slipping_?" Sokka reacted. "Why exactly is it that _I'm_ the only one who does this stuff? Whatever happened to 'everyone does their part', huh, Katara?"

But that didn't melt her stern glare in the slightest. Instead, his younger sister stalked towards him with cold fire in her eyes and stuck a finger in his face.

"We have been doing our parts, Sokka," she replied impatiently. "You said it yourself; the most important thing right now is for us to prepare for the future. That's what Aang and I are doing. What's _your_ excuse?"

"Yeah. Even I did my job," Toph added with a defiant smirk. She bobbed her head towards the circle of tents, all made from the rock they now stood on. Wood had been stacked in a neat pile beside the fire pit and there was a pot of water starting to boil their dinner.

Sokka blinked in mind-bending surprise. Then his arms and shoulders deflated. "You've _got_ to be kidding me."

"Uh…sorry, Sokka," Aang apologized a little hesitantly, scratching the back of his head. "If you need help gathering the supplies again, I could—"

"No," came the sharply reply. Sokka clenched his fists and swiftly grabbed the pack he'd left on the ground. "Forget it. I'll just do it myself."

The tone of his voice must have broken Katara's ice-cold stance, because she softened and raised a hand to stop him. "Wait, Sokka, I didn't mean—"

"I said I'd do it, Katara!" he snapped over his shoulder as he stormed down the hillside. "In case you forgot, an almighty warrior from the Water Tribe _never_ sli—"

"Look out," said Toph.

Too late. Sokka slipped on a rock. As soon as his foot came down, the ground moved underneath him and he took a dive headfirst down the rocky slope and landed heavily on his chest.

"Whoops. Sorry. Tried to warn you," the blind Earthbender called from above, without a shred of sincerity.

Boiling in his veins, he threw himself to his feet and stalked off towards the flat plateaus behind their campsite. He purposely shut out the voices yelling after him, focusing on the uneven slope of the path in front of him instead.

Stupid Katara. Stupid Aang. Stupid giant hairball and stupid flying monkey! What was the point of doing anything if they were all going to turn against him anyway? Six hours! Six _long_ hours of pulling ewwy, disgusting potatoes and duck roots out of the ground…for nothing! His boomerang was still covered in dirt from all that digging!

His arms were still stiff from all that work. And here he was…whoop-dee-doo, starting to do the _exact_ same thing he had to do last night. It wasn't his job to feed Appa. Appa wasn't _his_ flying bison; he was Aang's! The last time he checked, the overgrown pile of wet fur could find his own tree or a bush or something to digest. Why did it have to be _his_ food that Appa wanted?

It didn't occur to him until he came to the edge of the plateau that he was going too fast. This tiny little island didn't have much food growing on it to begin with._Now_ where was he going to get it? He'd practically turned it inside out already. Unless he resorted to catching fish—and he was really,_really_ getting sick of eating fish—there probably wasn't enough food left on dry land to feed them for _one_ day.

Overwhelmed by his frustration, Sokka squeezed the boomerang in his hand before hurling it with all his might into the hazy sunlight. He didn't even wait for it to come back. He'd get it later. Right now, it just…made him angry to look at it.

Sokka the errand boy. Sokka the great berry-picker. Sokka the man-servant. Toph could easily uproot every single edible thing in the ground with a single lift of her finger, but did she help? No! And all Aang had to do was shake the trees a little with his Airbending, and then he wouldn't have so spend do much time stuck in trees, getting pricked by thorns and covered in berry juice!

His rage mounted, adding pressure to the center of his ribs. This was the _last_ time he did anything that Katara goaded him into doing. She never listened to him anymore. It used to be so different, back at the South Pole. She'd actually thought of him as her big, protective older brother.

But ever since Aang showed up…she was different. It was like being a Waterbender made her better than him somehow.

It wasn't fair to blame either her or Aang, but it didn't change how he felt. He'd never be able to stand up to someone like Azula or Zuko. Not like they could. So long as he was flammable and those two psychotic royal siblings knew how to Firebend, he was as good as dead when it came to one-on-one dueling.

Just how was he supposed to be Katara's big, protective brother when she did all the fighting for him?

Kicking a stone over the edge of the plateau, Sokka turned with heavy shoulders and started to comb the island in search for food.

-

* * *

- 

Three hours and two packs of various rations later, he managed to climb back up the steep hill towards the campsite.

The sun went down even before he'd started back. Somehow, he'd known it would be dark by the time he finished gathering. Again. Only this time, he had one third of the food they'd had before, _and_ it had taken him half as long! The math was _way_ wrong.

Sokka dragged his feet along the dry dirt. The wind pushed at him from behind. His muscles ached. Everything was just starting to look up…at least now he could get some rest. Katara and the others would probably have dinner ready and his sleeping roll would be open and waiting for him…just waiting, for him to climb in and…sleep.

He'd spent most of the day griping to himself about Katara and the others. But, tired as he was, at least things weren't going to get any worse.

Thunder rolled in the distance. And, with the guise of his ironic, twisted fate, the sky suddenly opened up and a torrent of thick, heavy rain poured down on him from above.

He wanted to cry.

Instead, he shifted the packs on his shoulder and kept climbing. In his mind, he repeated over and over again, _Please let there be dinner. Please let there _at least _still be dinner!_

Finally, the campsite came into view. Sokka stopped dead in his tracks at the site of the blackened fire pit. The overturned pot. The three occupied rock-tents with carelessly dreaming friends of his inside. A loudly snoring Appa stuck inside his own little lean-to against the cliff face. And…

No.

Meat.

The packs skimmed down his shoulders and landed in the mud. A multitude of round, fire-red berries tumbled out and floated away in shallow stream of water that curved down the rocks. Desolately, Sokka turned and began to trudge away from the gathering of earth tents.

Fine. He didn't need their shelter _or_ their food. He could find a place to sleep and something to eat on his own.

That's what he thought, anyway.

He took five steps before he heard it—the sound that deafened even the pelting storm. His hand unconsciously flew to the hilt of his sword and hovered. Water splashed around his boots as he took a brisk fighting stance, waiting for the invader to leap out and surprise him at any moment…

But no one came. Sokka waited, water dripping in a steady stream from the point of his chin: eyes carefully scanning the fog for the telltale shape of an enemy.

Suddenly, the sound came again. This time, he could make out words through the din of the storm.

"…please, help! Somebody, please, help me!"

His hand dropped away from the hilt in surprise. Was that a woman? Here, on this dinky little island in the middle of nowhere? How was that possible?

"Help," the voice sobbed again, echoing slightly this time. It was…fading? "Someone—anyone—help me!"

Sokka's heroic instincts abruptly overrode everything in his mind, and he rushed forward through the screen of white haze. He glanced backwards only once—everyone was still asleep, undisturbed by the voice. That was fine. He could handle this on his own, anyway.

He deftly scaled over several large, flat plateaus and through the twisting, stone escarpments. The rain drove all around him, but he could hear the woman's desperate voice grow louder and clearer as he grew nearer to the edge on the other side of the highlands where they camped.

Eventually, he slowed to a walk as he came to the long, narrow cliff that protruded over the crashing waves of the ocean far, far below. The voice had stopped. Despite the thickness of the fog and the darkness, he could make out the slight figure of an object on the ground near jagged point of the cliff side.

Sokka approached delicately, too curious to stay back and too logical to pitch forward without a plan. He inched forward, getting closer to the thing sitting on the rocks with his sword outstretched in front of him.

Was that…a doll? It looked like that Painted Lady doll from the fishing place they'd visited before…what was its name again? Anyway, of all places, who would put a doll out _here_? And how?

He heard nothing but the wind and rain. Finally won over by his need to investigate, Sokka leaned forward and poked the figurine with the end of his sword.

Nothing happened.

He poked it again.

Still nothing.

"Hmmm…" He stood straighter, placing a thoughtful hand on his chin. "Now this has definitely gotten…a _little_ weird."

"You're _mine_, Avatar!"

The flash of movement happened fast and he didn't have time to react. A shadow came lunging at him from over the edge of the cliff. Sokka brought up his sword to parry, but found himself paralyzed as the white, blinding fire shot from Azula's hands and into his body.

He vaguely remembered floating somewhere very distant. Very…cold. And that was just before he blacked out.

-

* * *

- 

TBC

AN: Classic cliffhanger. Poor Sokka. Poor Azula. Even she makes mistakes, it seems…


	2. Chapter 2

_**World of Spirits**_

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AN: Some very sketchy Kataang references ahead. Am I the only one who thinks 'Kataang' sounds more like a pebble being chucked into a metal pot? _Ka-taang!_

Also, get out your box of tissues.

* * *

- 

The Avatar always dreampt of flying.

Usually, in his dreams, he was gliding along with Katara, Toph and Sokka. Momo and Appa were always there, too. Nothing ever went wrong while he was there, Airbending them all through the air without even breaking a sweat.

Tonight he and Sokka were racing each other on gliders. There were no clouds. No wind. Just a pair of bantering, uproariously laughing friends as they soared through the open sky.

But suddenly, the world turned red; a glimpse of the Fire Nation banner flashed through his mind. Aang was falling quickly and his glider was missing. Sokka plunged towards the ground beside him, but the only sound in his dream was the air rushing past Aang's ears. He tried Airbending to slow their descent, but his arms had gone numb. His legs weren't working. He was paralyzed.

Aang sat bolt upright inside his tent, screaming.

The sound woke everyone else. There came a muffled 'thud' and a slightly louder curse from Toph's direction. Her head, complete with extreme bed hair, emerged from the dark pit of her earth-tent.

"Lemme guess. Another nightmare, Twinkle Toes?" she asked dispassionately.

Katara's concerned but worn-out face appeared outside his tent. "Are you okay, Aang?"

He allowed himself to calm down, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. "Uh…yeah," he said and forced a chuckle. "Just another one of those…heh heh…" He looked at the ground embarrassedly. "Sorry to wake you up."

"Don't be sorry, Aang. It wasn't your fault," Katara assured him, smiling despite her obvious exhaustion. "It's still a while until sunrise, so let's just think about getting some more sleep."

"Um, guys?" Toph was now standing in the drizzling rain, her blank stare accompanied by a cross between surprise and annoyance. "I hate to be the one to point this out, but…Sokka's sort of…missing."

Katara spun around, just as Aang climbed out to join her. Momo leapt down out of nowhere to sit on his shoulder. "What? You mean he still hasn't come back?"

"Well, I can only feel four heartbeats," the unusual reply came. "Mine, yours, Aang's and Appa's. Momo doesn't count, so...yup, I'd say he's pretty much vanished." A pause. "That, and the horrible stench is gone."

Aang was half-expecting Katara to get angry, which turned out to be a valid prospect.

"Sokka!" she growled lividly. "Honestly, would it kill you to stay _out_ of trouble for just _one _night?"

Pushing the vivid images of his nightmare away, Aang reached backwards and grabbed his collapsed glider. "Don't worry, Katara. I'll fly up and take a look around. He probably just got stuck again, like that one time when I was learning to Earthbend. Remember?"

The words were meant to reassure her. He knew Katara well enough to know that she was angry because she was scared of losing Sokka. The closer to the Fire Nation they went, the harder it was to get a full night of sleep. Things always had a way of going from completely safe…to extremely dangerous.

"If you're going, I'm going," the Waterbender replied stubbornly as she crossed her arms. Then she looked a little withdrawn. "Sorry, Aang. My brother can be such a handful, and if anything ever happened to him, I'd—

"It's okay, Katara." Aang smiled. "We're all in this together. We're a family, and family's look out for each other. Right, Toph?"

"If you say so. Wait, if we're a family, wouldn't that be little weird if you and Katara—

"Whoa, are those storm clouds? Well, better get going!" Aang rushed to interrupt her before she could finish her sentence. He flicked open his glider and jumped into the air, bending it so that he took off through the flurry of rain like an arrow. "I'll start searching the coastline first! I'll find him, Katara, I promise!"

The orange dot that was the Avatar quickly disappeared against the gray cloudscape. Katara watched with a slightly raised eyebrow and glanced at Toph.

"Is it my imagination, or did he look a bit…edgier than normal?" she asked absentmindedly.

Toph folded her arms. "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear you say the l-word."

Katara felt a prickling of embarrassment. She chuckled a little and scratched her neck. "Oh…sorry, Toph. Um…listen, I'm going to look for Sokka on foot. Why don't you stay here and keep an eye—

"Arrgh! Foot, woman! Foot! Seriously, _how_ long have known me? And also: no. I'm coming with you. I can see farther, _and_ I'm the smartest person in the group. _Why _do you people keep on insisting on leaving me behind? Sometimes I think you all worship the altar of divine Stupidity or something!"

For a moment, neither of them said anything. After a short time, they couldn't hold back their childish snickering. Their nerves were still wound up from being awakened so suddenly, and their mutual concern for Sokka was underlying to anything they dared to express in words. The laughter made it a little easier to concentrate.

"C'mon, let's go look for your egghead brother."

Katara nodded. They both turned to follow the thick, water-filled tracks in the mud that would inevitably lead them to the egghead in question.

* * *

- 

"Sokka! _Soookka_!"

Aang glided over wind patterns and bent his natural element to balance the power of the storm's aftermath. This was not his idea of an easy ride, but he was the only one who could fly and he _was_ the Avatar after all. It didn't matter how dangerous it was; he was supposed to be doing this. And besides, waking Appa and forcing him to fly when he was already exhausted was the last thing he wanted.

It only took a few seconds for him to realize that he could have followed Sokka's mud tracks, but he couldn't turn back now and start over. What would Katara and Toph think? No; he was stuck doing this the long way. There was _no_ chance he was going to let anyone think he wasn't able to do this on his own.

The island was really small, anyway. How long could it possible take?

* * *

-

Ten minutes later, the weary Earthbender and Waterbender came to a dead end.

Sokka's tracks vanished in a layer of washed-out mud, and the path was split by a small cliff. Toph crouched down and placed both of her hands on the wet surface of a rock, concentrating with all her might. But all she could feel was the constant pattering of the rain and the occasional, scurried movement of a small animal.

"Nope. Still can't tell where he is," she announced a little heatedly. She was tired and the rain was annoying. Sokka was _so _getting a mouthful of gravel when they found him!

Katara sighed in return. Her arms were still folded, but this time, she was just barely attempting to retain some body heat. She'd given up bending the freezing cold rain away from her—it distracted her from searching, and she'd rather be frozen and miserable knowing her brother was okay rather than warm, comfortable and uneasy.

One of the paths led to the coastline; the other led further inland. The coastline was made mostly of rock, while the softer ground in the middle of the island was nothing but a mud heap. Neither of them had to discuss what their next move would be.

"I'll go check out the cliffs over this way," Toph said, standing up. "We should meet back here in fifteen minutes. If I'm not back by then, it'll mean I found him."

"Okay. The same goes for me," agreed Katara. "The island isn't that big; he's bound to be one way or the other."

"Well, if he's _this_ way, then I have first dibs on payback," the twelve-year-old Earthbender said, pounding one of her fists into the flat of her palm.

"Yeah," Sokka's younger sister replied, much more darkly. "The same goes for me."

They split ways, forcibly creating new trails through the muck and grime that covered the slow-going paths. After getting her foot stuck in the greedy mud for the third time, Katara began to wonder what life would have been like as a single child.

* * *

- 

By the time he had circled three quarters of the island's coast, Aang was starting to feel the strain in the pit of his stomach. In normal weather conditions, this would be just _too_ easy. But he'd spent way too much energy staying on course, flying against the erratic wind. If he didn't find Sokka soon, Katara and Toph would have to come looking for _him_.

He briefly thought of turning around and cutting straight across the island, back to the campsite. But he knew he couldn't do that—not when there was a chance that Sokka was just another minute's flight ahead of him. He just _had_ to finish what he started.

So Aang gathered his Airbending strength and kept battling nature for control of the sky.

There was only a small part of the coastline left to check when his search finally came to an end.

Far, far below him, he spotted—not Sokka, but Toph, kneeling down on a jagged precipice that hung over the crashing waves of the ocean. The moment he swerved to start circling lower, he realized that there was someone on the ground at her knees.

Sokka!

Aang forgot all about safety. In an instant, he'd collapsed his glider in mid-air and plummeted—slowly, slightly cushioned by his own Airbending—to the ground. His feet struck the rocky surface jarringly and it hurt, but not enough to stall him longer than a few seconds. He rushed forward in a burst of confused action.

"Toph, you found him! What hap—"

His words stopped in his throat. Toph's usual, stone-solid posture was hunched and broken. Immediately he knew that something was very wrong.

Toph inhaled sharply, but didn't lift her head. Her unseeing eyes couldn't recognize the inanimate face of the usually animated body in front of her, but they weren't necessary.

"Aang," she said quietly, as though speaking to a ghost. "I…can't feel…his heartbeat."

Aang suddenly could no longer feel his.

Maybe it was the will of a thousand previous Avatars in his body that moved his feet ever so silently to the place beside Toph. She stood up in a trance. Aang looked down without understanding, but he _was_ an Airbender. He would've known that Sokka wasn't breathing even if he'd been a hundred times blinder than Toph.

"S-Sokka?" he said hesitantly, never expecting an answer.

This wasn't a dream. He was living the real thing. It was worse than having his heart burned through with a saber of flame. Right now, he didn't even care if the Firelord set the world ablaze.

And the burning sensation grew tenfold when Katara came sprinting across the plateau towards them.

Even though Aang wanted to move and stop her—wanted nothing more in the world to keep her from finding Sokka like this, his mind was too numb to do anything. He weakly lifted a hand in protest, but could hardly even choke before Katara violently pushed him away and collapsed at her brother's side.

"Sokka? _Sokka_!" A hurricane of denial, she had grabbed his shirt and was shaking him. The streams under her eyes were made of rainwater. The streams under her eyes were made of tears. "Sokka, don't you dare do this to me! Don't you _dare_…don't…don't—"

She surrendered to a fit of wild sobbing. Katara hunched over her big brother, forehead to icy forehead, clutching to him as though trying to pull him back from the depthless void.

Aang felt the wall of his emotions burst painfully open, and with a lurch, he found his mind swept away by the catastrophic Avatar state.

* * *

- 

In her hands lay the Spirit Idol.

Azula was not pleased.

She had every right to be outraged. If the fog hadn't been so thick, this never would have happened. If she had controlled her emotions a little more, she might have hesitated a little before making her move. This damn puny island was the reason she had failed to capture the Avatar.

Instead, she had a useless artifact—now glowing with the pathetic energy of an even more useless Water peasant's spirit._Why_ hadn't the Firebending voice woken the Avatar? How could she have known this moron was the one who took the bait?

She was more than tempted to smash the idol on the ground. At least she would get a _little_ satisfaction, watching the spirit of one of Aang's friends fade out of existence forever. Actually, it would have been _more_ than satisfying. But strategically, it would be a waste of time.

Ty Lee was standing close by, for once in her life looking more frightened than sickening optimistic. Mai was staring at her dispassionately. They were both waiting for her enraged explosion.

They were both waiting for nothing.

It hardly surprised her when the ground started to shake, or when the sound of an explosion took place in the distance. The reflection of the resulting Avatar's wrath in her eyes matched the triumphant smirk on her face. Even as the whirlwind of water, stone, air and flame died down on the horizon, she knew exactly how to turn her mistake into a perfectly acceptable plan.

Azula didn't have the Avatar.

But she would soon.

* * *

AN: The Spirit Idol certainly is a strange invention, isn't it? Confused? Don't worry. There's still part three. 


End file.
